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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Flint Taylor on the Fight for Fred Hampton and Against Police Torture</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">susie.day</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">June 2, 2026</div>
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<h2>\u201cA Whole Movement Arose\u201d</h2>
<div>
<img width="558" height="446" src="https://susieday-snidelines.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Chicago_police_remove_the_body_of_Fred_Hampton_1969-1024x818.jpg" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;"><em><sub>Dec.
4, 1969, Chicago police remove the body of Fred Hampton, leader of the
Illinois Black Panther Party, slain by police on Chicago\u2019s west side.
(Courtesy of Chicago Sun-Times via AP & CounterPunch)</sub></em>
</div>
<p>Almost six decades ago in Chicago, during the rise of the Black
Panther Party, Flint Taylor, a white, twenty-something law student,
helped start the People\u2019s Law Office. Like Flint, the People\u2019s Law
Office has been around ever since, defending people excluded from the
political power grid against systemic discrimination and racist abuse.
One of the PLO\u2019s first cases, in fact, involved exposing the 1969
shooting deaths of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark as
FBI-orchestrated assassinations\u2014not, as the public was meant to believe,
another <em>cops-vs-thugs</em> gun battle. For years at the People\u2019s
Law Office, Flint has worked through hundreds of subsequent cases,
including some that proved instrumental in bringing to light a police
torture ring, led for over twenty years by Chicago Police Department
Commander Jon Burge. </p>
<p>In 2019, Flint wrote <em>The Torture Machine</em>, a book about these
cases and the top-down federal/state corruption that engendered them.
But, a few years later, looking at the police torture and murders of
Black people that continued across the country, Flint realized that you
don\u2019t always need government directives to destroy the lives of
\u201cmarginalized\u201d people. He decided to go deeper into the Chicago cases,
to burrow into forgotten records and study the work of ordinary, less
notorious beings\u2014prosecutors, judges, elected officials, informants,
jailhouse snitches\u2026. And now, Flint Taylor has written <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2733-the-conviction-machine"><em>The Conviction Machine</em></a>,
an account of the people whose everyday corruption and brutality create
tragedies like the Hampton murders and Chicago police torture. I talked
to Flint about his book\u2026</p>
<p><strong>Not a shootout; a shoot-<em>in</em></strong></p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>You write that the People\u2019s Law Office
began in a converted sausage shop in 1969, only months before Hampton\u2019s
murder. Did Fred have anything to do with starting the PLO?</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>Fred Hampton certainly had a hand in
starting the People\u2019s Law Office; also, the young lawyers I was working
with, including Dennis Cunningham, who represented Fred before there <em>was</em>
the Panthers. Dennis and the others\u2014Skip Andrew, Don Stang, Jeff
Haas\u2014were connected to the Chicago Legal Aid office. But Legal Aid
didn\u2019t permit representation of radical and revolutionary groups, so
they decided to start a new office. I was a second-year a law student at
the time and, along with other law students, went in with the lawyers
representing the Panthers. August 1, 1969, is the date we celebrate as
the office opening.</p>
<div>
<img width="386" height="558" src="https://susieday-snidelines.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/flint-taylor_haymarket-books.jpg" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;"><sup><em>Flint Taylor (Courtesy of Haymarket Books & AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)</em></sup>
</div>
<p>There\u2019s different versions of how we came to be known as the People\u2019s
Law Office. The one I like is that the Panthers talked about Power to
the People, the People\u2019s Health Clinic, the People\u2019s Breakfast Program\u2026.
So the people\u2019s lawyers became the People\u2019s Law Office. That stuck;
it\u2019s something we continue to take seriously.</p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>Did you, like some of your clients, consider yourselves revolutionaries?</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>I think, primarily, we identified with
our clients. We believed in what people like the Panthers were trying
to do\u2014and they were getting arrested and brutalized in large and small
ways every day. That was what we lawyers shared, that collective resolve
to represent them in the cases they were catching, mostly in the
criminal courts.</p>
<p>Within months of our starting, Fred Hampton was assassinated. That
cemented our commitment to the PLO; he was our client. We were the ones
who went to Fred\u2019s apartment, who went to the jail for those who
survived the raid. And we were the ones\u2014along with the Panthers, of
course\u2014who initiated the fightback against the lies people in power were
telling. Lies like Hampton being involved in a police shootout. No,
there was no shootout; Hampton was killed in a shoot-<em>in</em>: 90-some police bullets to one Panther bullet. It was a political assassination, part of a national assassination program.</p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>Fred Hampton was an extraordinary leader who
worked for a coalition that would unite racial and ethnic groups. Do
you think that was partly why he was targeted?</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>No doubt. He and the Panther leadership, like Bobby Lee. There\u2019s a wonderful movie by Mike Gray called <a href="https://vimeo.com/351632080">American Revolution 2</a>\u2014you
see the coming together of the Young Patriots, which was a white
working-class Appalachian group, the Young Lords with Cha Cha Jimenez,
the SDS\u2014both factions, after their split.</p>
<p>The Panthers were also trying to bring in the street gangs,
particularly on the south and west sides of Chicago. There was a war on
gangs, led by Mayor Richard J. Daley and Ed Hanrahan, Cook County State
Attorney, who\u2019s featured as a prime villain in my book. This was really a
war on the Black community and Black youth.</p>
<p><strong>Prosecutors heard the screams</strong></p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>Why does your book have a double focus on the Hampton/Clark murders and the Jon Burge police torture regime?</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>The assassination of Fred Hampton and
Mark Clark and its coverup, along with the 40-to-50-year scandal of
police torture in Chicago, are two of the most significant political and
racially motivated events in the city\u2019s history. In terms of court
battles, the People\u2019s Law Office and I were at the center of both cases.</p>
<p>My law partner Jeff Haas wrote a great book called <a href="https://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/the-assassination-of-fred-hampton-products-9781641603218.php"><em>The Assassination of Fred Hampton</em></a>.
But it and my prior writing about the Hampton case are focused
primarily on the FBI conspiracy and cover-up. Of course, that\u2019s what
Jeff and I, as trial lawyers, were uncovering. But <em>The </em><em>Conviction Machine</em>
looks at other primary conspirators, like the prosecutors\u2014because
Hampton\u2019s assassination and the police torture scandal could not have
happened but for prosecutors. The Fred Hampton case looks particularly
at Ed Hanrahan, the key prosecutor. Not only was Hanrahan involved in
the coverup, he was involved in planning the assassination.</p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>Your book first focuses on Hampton, a
self-avowed revolutionary. But later, covering police torture, you
center on Jackie Wilson, a little-known Black man with no discernible
politics. Why?</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>The 1980s Wilson case, in which Jackie
and his brother Andrew were tortured, was seminal. It opened the door
to a systemic program of torture that was enabled and facilitated by
prosecutors.</p>
<p>Prosecutors in the torture cases were in the stationhouses when Burge
was torturing people. They were told, often by the victims themselves,
that they were being tortured. They heard the screaming; they saw the
torture implements. And yet they came into the rooms and took the
confessions; they were active participants in getting confessions. They
then became witnesses for other prosecutors. And those confessions
became the basis for people going to the penitentiary, often to death
row. Then, in later cases, prosecutors lied when the survivors said
they\u2019d been tortured.</p>
<p>Lo and behold, this went all the way up to the chief prosecutor,
Richard M. Daley, who went on to be Chicago\u2019s mayor, after [his father]
Richard J. Daley. Through litigation, we got documents that show that
Daley was aware of the torture, specifically of the Wilson brothers, and
that he actively covered that up. He used their confessions to send
them to the penitentiary, Andrew for execution; Jackie for two life
sentences. That\u2019s why Fred Hampton\u2019s and Jackie Wilson\u2019s cases come
together, although you might say they\u2019re very different, politically.</p>
<p><strong>Justifying torture</strong></p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>Didn\u2019t Jon Burge started out as a police detective?</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>He went on to become a commander of
the police department. Burge learned the torture trade in Vietnam, in a
prisoner of war camp, and brought it back to Chicago to use against
scores of Black men suspected of crimes. His police set up a torture
machine, an electric shock box. There was also a torture called \u201cdry
submarino,\u201d which is putting a bag over someone\u2019s head and simulating
execution. There was putting a gun in someone\u2019s mouth or to his head,
pulling the trigger. There was beating with rubber hoses. That\u2019s what
the regime under Burge practiced for 20 years.</p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>Was the People\u2019s Law Office aware of this torture before you took on the Wilsons\u2019 case?</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>No. The first case we can document was
in 1972, but it was quite a closely held secret in the \u201970s. There were
a few cases brought to court, but the defense lawyers representing
folks Burge and his people tortured either didn\u2019t believe this could
happen, or decided strategically that they wouldn\u2019t raise it, because no
judge would ever acknowledge it.</p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>The Wilson case, according to your book,
started in 1982. The brothers were in a car that was stopped by police.
There was a struggle, and two officers died in a shooting.</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>Some eyewitnesses said that Andrew,
who was on parole at the time, got into it with the two cops and shot
them both. Jackie was the driver of the car and stood by\u2014there was
testimony to this\u2014pretty much in shock. Then they got back into the car
and drove away. There was an intense manhunt, which terrorized Chicago\u2019s
Black communities on the south and west side; cops were kicking down
doors and beating people. After five days, the Wilson brothers were
arrested and the full brunt of torture was brought down on both of them.</p>
<p>But the city couldn\u2019t keep the torture under wraps anymore. The Black
community was totally outraged by this broad-based police attack, so
the case was now in the public eye. The Wilsons\u2019 public defenders were
able to demonstrate there was torture, particularly with Andrew, who had
obvious physical injuries, marks on his ears from where the machine
clips had been placed to shock him, and burns on his chest in the
pattern of the steam radiator he was tortured against. But the
judge\u2014connected, obviously, to the Democratic machine\u2014rejected the
evidence. This torture was justifiable, in prosecutorial and judicial
circles. It was framed as \u201calleged police brutality against a double cop
killer\u201d\u2014Black is understood, of course\u2014carried out by a decorated
Vietnam-veteran commander of the Chicago police.</p>
<p>So Jackie and Andrew are charged with killing two white Chicago
police officers. They\u2019re convicted. Andrew goes to death row; Jackie
goes to prison.</p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>Four years later, you got involved. How?</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>In 1986, Andrew, who had a first-grade education, wrote a pro se civil rights complaint, and filed it in federal court.</p>
<p>He drew a judge\u2014we had some unbelievably bad judges in these cases;
some heroic judges as well\u2014who was conservative and racist. So here\u2019s
Andrew with this pro se case in front of a terrible judge, who\u2019s
assigning defense lawyers. But this case is radioactive; nobody wants to
take it. After they go through a series of lawyers who respectfully
decline, Andrew reaches out to us, I think because he knew our
reputation in fighting the Hampton case. We had just finished 13 years
of intense struggle against the police and prosecutors.</p>
<p>We looked at this case, and there seemed little or no chance of
winning. But we decided to take it. In the late \u201980s, we ended up with
two trials in Andrew\u2019s civil case. During these trials, thanks to an
anonymous police source [<a href="https://chicagodefender.com/a-final-judgment-in-notorious-police-abuse-scandal/">Deep Badge</a>],
we were able to develop evidence that the Wilson torture wasn\u2019t just a
one-off; it was part of a systemic racist regime led by Burge, known to
the Daley prosecution and many higherups. Based on that evidence, we
were able, over ten years, to get a settlement for Andrew, and help get
Burge fired.</p>
<p><strong>Andrew was a hero</strong></p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>What happened when the torture story finally became public?</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>A whole movement arose. Lawyers,
activists, and people locked up in prison were able to use this evidence
of torture to fight their cases. Some of these people were innocent,
some not; but all of them were tortured and gave confessions that should
not have been used against them.</p>
<p>Soon, the struggle turned back to the criminal courts to fight cases
for people on death row. Some men on death row came together and formed
the <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/19/jimmy_soto">Death Row 10</a>,
and they fought politically from inside. People on the street and
people fighting against the Illinois death penalty united with them.</p>
<p>In Andrew\u2019s case, because there was physical evidence of torture,
they threw out his coerced confession, but they still had eyewitness
evidence, so he was retried and convicted again. The judge very much
wanted to give him the death penalty again, but it was a jury question,
and one or two jurors held out. So Andrew got a double-life sentence,
and spent the rest of his life in prison. He died in prison in 2007.</p>
<p>But, in a way, Andrew was a hero. Over the years, he stood up again
and again and testified that Burge tortured him. Every time he had to
talk about it, he was put through another form of mental torture. But he
testified at two of our civil trials. He testified again later when
Burge was tried administratively and fired. Each time he talked, he told
how he was tortured.</p>
<p>Jackie also got another trial, was convicted again, and sat in prison for decades.</p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>Some of these activists created the <a href="https://www.chicagotorturejustice.org/">Chicago Torture Justice Center</a> site. This must\u2019ve been quite a movement.</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>Over the years, there were actually
intergenerational movements. The first arose around our trials in the
late 1980s. People took the evidence to Chicago City Hall and demanded
that the police superintendent deal with Burge and police torture. Then,
in the early 2000s, as the cases shifted into criminal courts, the
movements that came together around torture and the death penalty led to
George Ryan, the governor of Illinois, a conservative Republican, <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/illinois-death-row-inmates-granted-commutation-by-governor-george-ryan-on-january-12-2003">granting clemency to all the people on death row</a>
and commuting their sentences to life without parole. He also granted
four innocence pardons on the basis of Burge torture. Two of those four
were our clients.</p>
<p>We were able to then bring civil suits that led to another wave of
movement activity that uncovered new levels of police torture. We got
some former Black detectives who worked with Burge to give statements
that validated the fact of torture. Ultimately, we found about 150
documented cases of police torture under Burge\u2019s regime.</p>
<p>That struggle went international, to the United Nations, which resulted in a 2006 statement by the <a href="https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/publications/un-torture-report-2006/">UN Committee Against Torture</a>
that connected Chicago police torture to US government torture in Abu
Ghraib, Iraq, and Guantánamo. And, because this became an international
issue, when the Daley people tried to bring the Olympics to Chicago in
2009, the movement said, <em>This is the torture capital of the country;</em> <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/chicagos-olympic-dreams-undeserved"><em>you can\u2019t bring the Olympics here</em></a>. That struggle was successful.</p>
<p>This led to the feds actually investigating Jon Burge. But, because
the statute of limitations on torture had passed, the only thing Burge
could be prosecuted for was obstruction of justice and lying under oath
about whether he tortured anybody. He was convicted in 2010, sentenced
to 4 ½ years, and went to a federal penitentiary.</p>
<p><strong>Reparations</strong></p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>It isn\u2019t often that Power admits wrongdoing. Did it actually happen here?</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>About 2010, the movement regenerated
around the concept of reparations. This was a total coming together, an
intergenerational, interracial movement of artists and activists during
Rahm Emanuel\u2019s time as Chicago mayor. Emmanuel came in on the coattails
of Obama, but he was extremely unpopular in the Black community; he
closed down schools, clinics, gutted community services in predominantly
Black communities. But he was up for reelection, so the movement put a
tremendous amount of pressure on him in the run-up to the election.</p>
<p>They succeeded in getting a remarkable package of reparations for the
survivors of Burge\u2019s torture. All those who were still alive got
$100,000 each. There were nonfinancial things as well. One was job
training for people who wanted it, and for their families; another was
the creation of a <a href="https://thetriibe.com/2025/12/chicago-torture-justice-memorial-to-be-built-in-washington-park/">memorial</a>,
funded by the city, on the south side, that would offer counseling and
other services, not only for the survivors and their families of Burge\u2019s
torture, but for other victims of police violence in the city. A lot of
money has been raised, but there still isn\u2019t enough to actually
construct it.</p>
<p>Then there was an apology from Mayor Emanuel in 2013, which took
place at City Council. We were there in the back of the council
chambers, along with the survivors. And Rahm Emanuel\u2014whether sincere or
not\u2014gave a remarkable <a href="https://peopleslawoffice.com/emanuel-apologizes-for-torture-under-former-chicago-police-commander-cohorts/">apology</a>.
From the 1980s and \u201990s, all the way to the 2000s, we\u2019d fought battles
at City Council, holding hearings on Christmas Eve, disrupting
proceedings. Then suddenly, these Council people\u2014probably less than half
of them ever supported anything we\u2019d done\u2014all of them turned around to
the men and applauded. Whatever you think about politicians, they did
this, and it was meaningful, particularly to the men and their families.
But perhaps the most significant reparation was the establishment of a
program for teaching the history of police torture to eighth- and
tenth-graders in Chicago public schools.</p>
<p>Another accomplishment of the movement was that a group called Black
People Against Police Torture got the Illinois legislature to pass a
Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission Act [<a href="https://www.soulsjournal.org/article/a-human-right-to-reparations-black-people-against-police-torture-and-the-roots-of-the-2015-chicago-reparations-ordinance">TIRC</a>]
that allowed people in prison who said they were tortured by Burge to
bring a complaint. If the Commission believed torture occurred, the case
would be sent to criminal court. So people who didn\u2019t have any kind of
appeal before could, under this extraordinary <a href="https://www.injusticewatch.org/archive/2022/burge-torture-taxpayer-tab-210-million/">TIRC Ac</a>t, get back into court.</p>
<p><strong>36 years, $30 million</strong></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>That TIRC Commission Act led Jackie
Wilson, in 2011, to file a petition. By now, he\u2019s been in jail, what, 29
years? After more years, in 2015, Jackie is given the right to go to
court. This is his third trial. Our office took his case and got
probably the worst judge in criminal court; he\u2019d been involved in at
least one torture case as a prosecutor. We could see spending the rest
of our lives fighting Jackie\u2019s case, especially since the judge himself
was allowed to rule as to whether to remove himself. Finally, I was able
to bring this to the attention of an upright editor at the <em>Chicago Sun-Times</em>, and the op-ed board wrote an editorial saying, This judge should recuse himself.</p>
<p>So the judge is really angry now. We go back to court and he goes
nuts and accuses me of being on crack, among other insulting things. But
finally, he says, \u201cYou win; I\u2019m off the case.\u201d Then we get an
independent African American judge, Bill Hooks. He gives Jackie a new
trial\u2014and bond. So, in 2018, pending trial, Jackie\u2019s out, he\u2019s a free
man. In 2020, Jackie\u2019s case was dismissed. Hooks not only threw out his
confession, but found that Jackie was factually innocent. That led us to
bring a civil case. Ultimately, in 2024, Jackie ended up getting $30
million for his 36 years in prison.</p>
<p>Of course, the torture story is not over here in Chicago. There are
more cases in front of the TIRC, and people still being coerced into
giving confessions.</p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>Have you studied how Chicago\u2019s torture history compares to, say, New York City or Ames, Iowa?</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>I wish I had done more. This kind of
racist criminal legal system is not unique to Chicago, though it may be
more extreme here. In other places like San Francisco, where progressive
prosecutors like Chesa Boudin were elected, it\u2019s hard. Chesa basically <a href="https://san-francisco-news.com/2025/10/22/san-francisco-voters-oust-da-chesa-boudin-amid-heated-crime-policy-debate/">got voted out</a> of office because he took on the police department and tried to make changes in the criminal legal system.</p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>I\u2019m thinking that, given who\u2019s president,
something like a Burge regime might appear in other places, and this
time be better protected.</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>I hear you. The blatant illegality of
the federal government does conjure up those possibilities. But all we
can do is resist in any way we can. One way is to teach that this isn\u2019t
the first time this fascist racism has happened\u2014there\u2019s been threads of
it for at least the last 50 or 60 years.</p>
<p><strong>Evidence = narrative</strong></p>
<p><em><strong>sd: </strong>I get why you\u2019ve gone below the headlines
to uncover connections between Hanrahan and Burge and all the people who
worked with them. Individuals do everyday, perfunctory things that
create larger political realities.</em></p>
<p><strong>Flint Taylor: </strong>Exactly. That\u2019s why I think of myself
as a movement lawyer. I fight to make this evidence part of a public
narrative. People\u2019s narratives don\u2019t just come out of thin air. They
fight back against the power structure\u2019s narratives, whether it\u2019s about
assassination or hidden police torture. What was the system?; how high
did it go?; how deep were the coverups? That\u2019s changing the narrative.
But it\u2019s not going to stay that way, unless we fight to defend it.</p>
<p>We\u2014I use that term broadly\u2014the Panthers, the lawyers, the activists
and progressive politicians\u2014change that narrative. Over the decades,
I\u2019ve had the fortune to work with the Panthers and other movements and a
great set of legal folks. Hopefully, my books will have an impact,
large or small, in teaching the truth, people\u2019s stories about these
events in Chicago history.</p>
<p># # #</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/05/31/flint-taylor-on-the-fight-for-fred-hampton-against-police-torture/" type="link" id="gmail-https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/05/31/flint-taylor-on-the-fight-for-fred-hampton-against-police-torture/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">\u2014susie day, 2026</a></strong></p>
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